"Mare Nostrum" is not a shopping mall but a swim meet tour in France

Laure Manaudou swam for a team called Canet when she was training in France. Her coach, Philippe Lucas, is credited for coaching her to the "Janet Evans" level and took pride in her accomplishments. Manaudou even lived with both he and his wife. Manaudou recently split with her coach and team and has now moved to Italy to train and to be near her boyfriend, Luca Marin.

Both Lucas and her Canet team were seemingly humiliated and subsequently had harsh words for both Manaudou and her new Italian coach, Paolo Penso, which Manaudou and the Italians took the high ground and replied back politely.

Now, a swim meet tour in France called the Mare Nostrum is about to take place at the Canet pool in which Manaudou was scheduled to race. Manaudou won't or can't race due to a fractured foot. It appears that she fractured the foot after being thrown into the water by her adopted teammates. But Canet is demanding that she come anyway and watch.

This is how acrimonious it has become:

• "Good for them. "If she's injured, she can't race, obviously, said the man at the helm of Canet, Jean-Marie Portes, in reference to news that Manaudou will not now race at the meet organised annually by her former home club in southern France after injuring a foot during celebrations for her new club in Turin in the wake of Italy's club championships in Rome last weekend."

• "But we demand her presence in the name of the moral contract she has signed up to. It's a simple matter of honouring her word. Her presence here will suffice," said Portes. [Link]

As nationalistic as America is accused to be, you would never see this sort of drama in America.